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What's New in 2003 |
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New Features
We've spent a lot of time updating myfantasyleague.com to address many of the features requested by our customers. While we'll continue to work on new and improved features in the coming months (check back to this page for frequent updates!), the following is a list of some of our 2003 system enhancements to date:
(as of December 3, 2003)
Live Scoring -
Notations have been added to both the summary and detail reports for live scoring to show players on teams currently during games (dashed line), players on teams currently in possession of the ball (black bullet), and players on teams currently in the red zone (red diamond).
(as of November 21, 2003)
Waivers -
An enhancement has been made to better account for waivers before and after weeks that start with a Thursday game (Week 13 starts with two games on Thanksgiving Day. Please see this Waiver Announcement message board post for more information.
(as of November 13, 2003)
Live Scoring -
A live scoring summary page report have been added to the system to see how each team's starters are faring during the games.
2003 Survey -
As we're always interested in what our customers think, we've released a survey to get owner and commissioner feedback. Please take a few minutes and help us by including your comments.
Playoffs -
An enhancement to the playoff system has been added to include a graphical bracket system for leagues. Please go to "For Commissioners > Setup > General Playoff Setup for more information.
Starting Lineups -
The system now allows owenrs that have defined a precise lineup deadline to also add separate lineup deadlines for Thursday and Saturday games. Furtermore, the league also has the option to force all lineup submissions to be complete or allow partial lineups to be submitted.
Reports -
For leagues that use the locked players option, the Top Performers and Free Agents reports now display the "locked" status for all currently locked players.
(as of October 30, 2003)
Live Stats -
During the games, all players currently in games that are underway, but not yet completed, will display a dashed line around the player name.
Reports -
A new report, "Points Allowed - By Posiion" has been created under the Fantasy League Reports submenu. This report details how many fantasy points each NFL team has allowed, broken down on a position-by-position basis. The "Total" column displays the year-to-date total points allowed, and the "Avg" column displays an average points per game allowed, with bye weeks factored in. This report will help highlight especially weak or especially strong NFL teams in any given area, customized to your fantasy scoring system.
The "Rosters" and "Starting Lineups" report now have links to the "Player Information" report for each player listed.
On the "For Commissioners > Setup > Division/Conference Setup" page, you can specify a division logo for each division. This logo can either be a URL on another site or you may upload the logo to the myfantasyleague.com site. This logo will be displayed on the league standings report in place of the division name.
Blind Bidding -
The submission time has been added to all future blind bids.
Injured Reserve -
The most recent NFL injury stats has been added to the Injured Reserve report and commissioner's can now place a player on a team's IR regardless of any other restrictions that prevent a team owner from doing this.
(as of October 14, 2003)
Stat Changes -
Due to an increased frequency of NFL stat issues, we've added the For Commissioners > Stat Changes menu item to allow each league to decide whether or not to use a specific change.
League Polls -
An addition to the For Owners > League Polls screen now allow commissioners to see all owners who have not yet voted in all polls.
Message Board -
League posts and replies can now include HTML in the message body.
(as of October 8, 2003)
Scoring -
Whenever a league's rules are changed throughout the course of the season, the system will now prompt the league commissioner with a home page message to (1) only apply changes to future weeks, (2) recalculate only the most recent week, or (3) recalculate all weeks.
Miscellaneous -
The system has small updates for Waiver Requests, League Standings, Previously Processed Waviers for Blind Bidding, and Colors Setup.
(as of September 25, 2003)
League Articles -
The author or a league article can now edit any of their previously defined articles and the ability to specify an Article Image URL (before you had to upload an image) have been added.
Waivers Report for Blind Bidding Waivers -
For any manually processed blind bidding waivers (using the "Blind Bidding" waiver window type), the system will now generate a report containing all the bid requests and awards. This is the same report previously available to the auto-processed waivers (as noted below). In addition, two other blind bidding enhancements have been added.
Waivers Report for Manually Processed Waivers -
For any manually processed waiver requests (using the "Waiver Request" waiver window type), the system will now generate a report containing all the waiver requests and awards. This is the same report previously available to the auto-processed waivers (as noted below).
Home Page Modules -
A number of home page modules have been added in the past few weeks which can be added using the For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup > Home Page Setup screen. Recent additions include the Franchise Roster and Pending Trades modules as well as Two Narrow Home Page Message modules.
Top Performers Report Data -
A small enhancement was made to the Top Performers report to include the "Returners" filter. When set this will add a column of return stats for the selected players.
(as of September 13, 2003)
League Access -
The system can now support access via IP number instead of the myfantasyleague.com domain (in the web address). This might allow some customers who were otherwise blocked by a corporate filter. Please see this message board announcement for details and limitation.
(as of September 11, 2003)
Waivers -
The system now can support the ability to automatically process 'Waiver Request - Reverse Of Sort Criteria...' waiver windows (enabled in Transactions Setup).
Locked Players -
The commissioener now has the ability to unlock individual players listed in the Locked Players report.
Home Page -
Two new modules have been added to the list of home page modules that can be displayed on a league's home page. The 'Link to Live Scoring' module will display a simple link to your league's live scoring page, making it easier for owners in your league to access this important information. The 'Next Week's NFL Schedule' module will display the upcoming week's NFL schedule, along with a link to the weather in that city (just like the current "NFL Schedule" report does).
(as of August 29, 2003)
Starting Lineups -
The system now can enforce flex offensive players and flex defensive player at the same time and prevent owners from stealing IDPs to add to their IOPs.
The starting lineup page has a new link to the FantasySharks.com Lineup CoachTM tool. This fully automated tool intelligently analyzes your roster and suggests players that you might want to start based on your current league's settings.
Salary Caps -
The Salary Cap Setup screen has been added for salary cap leagues to allow for different salary caps per franchise as well as to include/exclude IR players from the cap numbers.
Blind Bidding Waivers -
The comments field has been increased, the waiver page shows how much a team has spent year-to-date, and a small bug (comma in the comments field) has been fixed.
(as of August 17, 2003)
Fantasy Schedules -
More than 100 new schedules have been added for leagues that want to play doubleheaders and those that have two conferences.
(as of August 8, 2003)
Online Scoring Setup -
The ability to set up and modify your league scoring system on-line (without needing to download and install any additional software) has been added to the Scoring/Ties Setup screen.
Draft Coach -
The online draft had a new link to the FantasySharks.com Draft CoachTM tool. This fully automated tool intelligently suggests players that you might want to draft based on your current league's rules.
Waivers -
The ability to drop players at any time, regardless of the type of waiver system, has been added.
Blind Bidding Waivers -
An option has been added to include a 'Do Winning Blind Bid Waiver Amounts Get Assigned As Player Salaries? Yes/No' input field on the Transactions Setup screen.
League Polls -
The number of polling answers has been increased to ten and an option has been added to automatically make all the franchise names valid poll answers.
(as of July 28, 2003)
Blind Bidding Waivers -
This enhancement to the waiver system allows owners to submit hidden bids on free agents and awards (via Process Waivers) the player to the highest bidding franchise. Please see Blind Bidding Announcement for more information.
Home Page Message -
The home page can now support up to four separate Home Page Messages that will allow commissioners to intersperse HTML and/or plain text throughout their home page.
Pre-Drafting -
Two additions to the system's pre-drafting capabilities have been added. Now an owner can pre-draft for any round at any time and pre-draft for multiple picks in the same round.
Message Board/Bulletin Board -
The league commissioner now has the ability to disable franchise access to either/both of the league's message board and/or bulletin board.
Salary/Contract Setup -
This page now gives the commish to sub-select players based on their position and/or roster status to help define this information more quickly.
(as of July 22, 2003)
League Articles -
Now the commissioner and all owners can create their own 'news' articles (complete with an image) for the league. The most recent article can be placed on the home page along with a link to view other articles.
Reports -
The 'Weekly Summary' report has been added as a module that can be defined on the league home page (using the Home Page Setup screen). This is especially useful for leagues that run a combined Head-to-Head and Total Points system and want two separate tables with the data sorted for each.
Menu -
A new option has been added to the Menu Setup screen to hide the 'For Commissioner' menu from being displayed for non-commissioners.
User Interface -
A new option has been added to the Other Appearance Settings Setup screen to hide the league name from the top of the league pages. This was designed for leagues that have their name embedded into a league logo.
Privacy -
In order to keep the commissioner email address even more secure, anyone not logged into a league can only fill out a form to send an email to a commissioner. While this will still allow an owner to communicate with the commissioner, it will prevent the commissioner's email address from appearing to any outside source.
(as of July 15, 2003)
Home Page Customization -
The league commissioner has far more control over the appearance of your league home page using the Home Page Setup menu option. Essentially, this option allows the commish to specify what 'modules' to include/exclude on the league home page, as well as the order of those modules. All of the modules that used to be on the For Commissioners > Setup > Appearance Setup > Other Appearance Settings page are now present on this page, as well as some additional modules, including the 'league poll' module (see below).
League Polls -
League polling has been added to the system to allow a commissioner to define a poll to be voted on by all members of the league. This can be used for both entertainment as well as league-wide voting of trade approval/rejection and/or new league rules.
(as of July 2, 2003)
Reports -
Potential Points & Coaching Efficiency Percentage have been added to the Weekly Results report. Potential points are defined as the maximum number of points a team could have achieved in a given week, assuming that they had started all of their top-scoring players, and benched all of their bottom-scoring players. The efficiency rating is simply a measure of the percent of points that a given team did get versus their 'potential points'. These two items can also be added to the Standings report.
Bye Week Carryover Points have been added to the system. When enabled, a player started on a bye week will receive the same fantasy points that he did from the previous week.
Transactions -
The option for delete transaction records has been added (back). This will allow commissioners to remove test or incorrect transaction records from their Transaction History report.
(as of June 23, 2003)
Reports -
The Franchise Info report has been updated to allow for a 'My Options' set of links to allow the following:
- If you're logged in as an owner, and see that 'My Options' row for your own franchise, it will have links to do all things that are currently under the 'For Owners' menu.
- If you're logged in as an owner, and see that 'My Options' row for another franchise, it will have a link to propose a trade with that other franchise.
- If you're logged in as a commish, the 'My Options' row will contain all options under the 'For Owners' menu for each franchise. This also has the added benefit for the commissioner to allow management of just one franchise at a time if using the new, JavaScript menus. For example, if the commish went to the 'My Options' row for franchise #1 and clicked on basic franchise setup, he could just change the franchise setup parameters (and email the password to that owner) for only that one franchise (rather than all franchises if he used the basic franchise setup option under the 'For Owners' menu).
Starting Lineups -
The option for each player to be started/benched at the kickoff of his NFL game has been added. This will, for example, allow teams with a game-time decision player to wait until Monday night before starting/benching the player.
(as of June 16, 2003)
Weekly Newsletter -
This information can now be displayed on the league home page.
Reports -
'Franchise Owner Activity' which includes when the owner last visited the league home page, as well as their instant messaging online/offline status indicator can now be optionally displayed on the league home page. Additionally, the transaction report will display optional comments filled in when a trade has been proposed. This can be used for example to record trading future year's draft picks.
(as of June 9, 2003)
Message Board -
Franchise Icons, Franchise Logos, and any other image can now be included on any message board post.
Reports -
The Standings report now offers the ability to choose and order which columns of data will appear. In addition, the detailed Players report (accessible by clicking on the player's name in the Top Performers/Player Stats report) has been condensed and totals have been added to all columns containing numeric data.
Weekly Newsletter -
This capability for the commissioner has been added to allow the posting of messages & graphics on a weekly basis.
Help File -
We've overhauled our online help file to give more in-depth information about our system.
(as of June 2, 2003)
Accounting -
Trading fees now can be defined on a fee per player in addition to a fee per trade.
Waivers -
Preseason waiver support has now been added.
Email -
Commissioner-specific email settings have been added and placed on a separate setup screen.
Reports -
Two optional custom columns for tracking league-specific data have been added to the Standings report.
(as of May 26, 2003)
User Interface -
We've updated the default site navigation to a new, floating JavaScript menu. Now there's no need to scroll up/down through long reports as the menu will move with you. Of course, we've still left the old menu system (now called 'MFL Classic') for those leagues that prefer not to change.
As we've added features over the years, some of the setup pages were growing to a rather cumbersome length. We've broken these out into smaller, more understandable setup menus for quicker access. Specifically, the League & Appearance Setup options are now divided into a number of manageable sub-setup screens.
We've also added a shortened version of the League Setup and Franchise Setup to allow an initial league setup in a few minutes and updated the waivers and draft user interface modules for easier navigation.
Login -
The 2003 system is now even more secure with each user login session. There's also no confusing 'Remember my Password' checkbox as all passwords are remembered by the system. You'll also notice that the system keeps track of the current user logged in the upper, right-hand corner of your league pages.
Live Stats -
One of the best features of myfantasyleague.com keeps getting better. We've reduced the time between updates to offer even quicker results during the games and we've added a Point Value column for easier viewing of live data. In addition, for customers who play in multiple leagues, the live stats system will now allow one live stats window for each league (as opposed the one window per PC).
Message Board -
The 2002 message boards (regular and enhanced) have been replaced with a single, integrated board to offer the best options of each of the old boards. Now you can have the functionality of the 2002 enhanced board along with the integration of the 2002 regular board - no special login is required). In addition, the last five messages can be displayed on your league's home page to help generate more league trash talking.
Reports -
A number of new reports and report enhancements have been added. The Standings report can now revert back to any previous week in the season to give a quick snapshot of the league standings at any point in time. The Standings report also allows you to add a custom column to it, for those leagues that track unique standings criteria. The Fantasy Schedule By Franchise and Fantasy Schedule - Compact reports have also been added for better viewing of the fantasy schedule while a new Accounting report offers the ability to better track finances.
Draft System -
The first step to a successful league is its draft. To enhance the draft, we've added the ability to save comments for each pick to display them on the draft report and modified the auto-picker to take into account the league's position limits when making a selection instead of just selecting the highest overall ranked player. Also, pre-drafting has a much simpler, easier to use interface, and you can now quickly and easily copy your pre-draft picks from round to round with one button click. In addition, the first pick of the draft may now pre-draft.
We've also updated the live draft by adding round & pick information to this screen and automatically resetting the timer once it counts down to 00:00.
Waiver System -
There are many enhancements to the waiver system for 2003 to report. The waiver order can now be manually customized if the sort criteria do not conform to your league's rules and the order itself can now be displayed on the home page. Waiver charge amounts may now also be changed during the season without affecting past waiver charges.
Leagues using a waiver request period now have a Copy Round button that will allow them to copy players from one round to the next and waiver request comments have been added that are used if the commissioner chooses to manually process waivers. Furthermore, the waiver system has been extended from the mandatory three waiver windows of last year to any number, up to five distinct periods, to support more combinations of varied waiver rules each week. In addition, commissioners can explicitly define pre-season waiver rules.
The Waiver Wait Period can be set so that a recently dropped player is unavailable until a specific date/time in addition to a set number of days/hours.
Accounting -
The accounting system has been decoupled from the waiver system to allow varied waiver charges in different times of the year. A new League Accounting report has also been added along with several new accounting auto-entries (such as weekly high/low score, etc) to better track your league finances.
Email -
Faster email delivery means that you should get any system-generated email much quicker this year.
2002 League Upgrade -
It's no longer necessary to go to a separate page to upgrade your league. Instead, the league commissioner can simply click on a link in the 2002 home page to upgrade (and therefore copy) all pertinent 2002 league information to 2003. What's more, the 2003 league will add a link back to it's 2002 parent and vice versa. This will give your league members an easy way to traverse back to check out last season's history.
Keeper/Dynasty League Support -
With the addition of the Load Keepers setup option, the commissioner can easily transfer some/all of the 2002 rosters to an upgraded 2003 league. This also does not have to be done at the time of upgrade (as was previously required).
Deluxe League Support -
As a replacement for our 2002 sister-league offering, the new "Deluxe" league offers the ability to have multiple franchises acquire the same NFL player on their roster and separate these duplicate players by conference or division.
Purchasing -
The purchasing system has been automated even further to allow you to order online directly from your 2003 league using the Purchase League option. There's no more need to receive and enter an activation code as a successful purchase will activate your league at the time of completion.
Support -
We've added this separate "What's New" help page along with context-sensitive system help (in progress) and we're updating our FAQ with more answers to common questions and made accessing help more prominent.
Position Change -
The sometimes-confusing TM position has been evolved into the DT position. If your league uses only a team defense (without special teams or with a separate special teams position) then nothing has changed - you'll still use the DT. However, if your league used a combined team defense and special teams position, you'll now use the DT instead of the TM (this will be automatically changed for 2002 leagues upgraded to corresponding 2003 leagues).
Behind the Scenes -
We've also made many program optimizations to help the site run faster during periods of high usage and help us offer you better support.
... and there's much more to come so please check back!
NFL Statistic Changes:
As the NFL changes official stats (which unfortunately happens from time to time), we will update our stats accordingly. Please check back often to see any recent changes.